Hell's Messenger
by thousandyearflower
Summary: "Because my kind were banished aeons ago. Into the Void. Into the Rift. Into someplace infinitely worse then what they are subjecting Aizen to. We were banished into the gaping nothingness that is out of reach to even the Dangai." Ichigo gaped. "Into Hell."


"_Hell welcomes you."_

The blood red double doors creaked open.

* * *

_-[welcome!]-_

* * *

[Ichigo]

The Fullbringers were out of my life. The shinigami are back.

A month has passed since that night Rukia stabbed me with the reiatsu-filled sword, and I feel great. I've been training and building up my stamina.

Life seems more colourful somehow.

Still, there's one thing bothering me. I've talked to Urahara about it, but he says nothing on the subject. He must be hiding things again.

* * *

_-[welcome!]-_

* * *

Misato-sensei waltzed into the noisy classroom.

"Yosh, settle down! Class. Is. Star. TING!" she drawled as she slammed her books onto the podium.

Slience crashed into the class. All the students jerked in her direction.

"Whatcha starin' at? Sit down n' listen up! I have a transfer ta introduce!"

She waved the register in the air then slapped it onto the podium.

"Ya can c'mon in!"

As Misato-sensei turned to scribble noisily on the chalkboard, the newcomer stepped hesitantly into the classroom, sling bag swinging on her shoulder.

"A warm welcome for Caroline Schnyder's expected~!" The teacher hollered.

She continued to talk about Schnyder's background, but no one was listening. They were busy checking her out.

Caroline was of average height, wearing her hair loose with a fringe that half-covered, half-framed a sharp chin. A measure of Western characteristics were in her: from the pale skin and sculptured cheekbones to the light brown hair and chestnut eyes. She had a nice figure too, not too voluptuous or too flat.

She was pretty in a nice, decent way, just with one flaw, and Ichigo's brow twitched as he spotted it. Why was she in the boys' uniform?!

* * *

_-[welcome!]-_

* * *

[Caroline]

Caroline twisted her long hair around her fingers as she surveyed the class. The students were staring at her weirdly as the funnily retarded teacher prattled on about something Germany. Gosh, she hoped it would not be like when she returned to Japan five years ago.

"A…ano, yoroshiku onegaishimasu!" Caroline cut through whatever the teacher was saying, giving a full 90 degree bow. She just wanted to get out of the spotlight and into an unseeing corner.

When she straightened Caroline tried a smile she'd been practicing in front of the mirror in the morning.

There was a sharp intake of breath from the class and she dropped it, fearing she did something wrong.

Geez, she's really not good with manners in strict Japan.

* * *

_-[welcome!]-_

* * *

When Schnyder offered that smile, Ichigo swore he saw Keigo sit up and wag his tail like a lovesick puppy.

He did a mental facepalm.

"Okaie, Schnyder-san, you go sit in that empty seat beside Kurosaki." Misato-san said dismissively.

Misato-sensei chucked the now-too-short chalk into the bin.

"Kurosaki-kun's the one with the orange hair," a boy said helpfully seeing the lost look on Schnyder's face.

Ichigo swore that by feigned a dead faint when Caroline shot him a grateful smile.

The blonde pulled out the chair for her as she came down the aisle, replying her muttered thanks with a nod.

* * *

_-[welcome!]-_

* * *

Halfway through math class –

"_It's really good to hear your voice, saying my name it sounds so sweet, coming from the lips of an angel, hearing those words it makes me weak!_"

Caroline gave a squeak next to Ichigo, who had gone rigid.

_A Hollow?! _Ichigo leapt from his seat, feeling the vile pressure and throwing a hurried, "Toilet!" to the teacher then tearing out of the class.

Vaguely he heard a crash and a bang and another hurried, "Sorry! Stomach ache!" and the thudding of shoes on linoleum floor.

He chalked it up to Orihime following him, and thought nothing of it.

Popping his soul out, he let his body fall, trusting Orihime to take care of it. Swinging his zanpakuto out he pushed off to find the Hollow.

_Its reiatsu is high… almost as high as an Adjucas. What's going on? _Ichigo frowned, but then he frowned a lot all the time.

Ishida was sick today – the bout of flue that has been going round seeming to finally catch up with him – so the hollow clearing business was up to Ichigo. And he'll be damned if he didn't kill that Adjucas before it reached the school compound.

* * *

_-[welcome!]-_

* * *

The adjucas had to be a borderline Vasto Lorde for all the trouble it was causing Ichigo Kurosaki.

Where's Orihime? Didn't she come with him? Why isn't she helping him? Why hasn't she – holy shit, was there another Hollow he missed and Orihime was not talking or helping because she was –

Ichigo spun backwards while parring a strike from the Adjucas.

No, Orihime was not in trouble. In fact, it wasn't even her. It was the transfer.

She was standing there, in the air (the fight had taken both Ichigo and the Hollow airbone) in her boy's uniform, tapping at her phone, a mere few feet from their scuffle.

He was so surprised and shocked – he had not felt anything akin to reiatsu from her when she entered the class, and Orihime had not glanced at him fearfully like she did that time Hirako Shinji 'transferred' to his class – that he nearly didn't block the next strike from the Hollow. Even now, disturbingly, he was not sensing anything.

"What the hell Schnyder?!" Ichigo managed to ground out, caught in a lock.

The girl absent-mindedly hummed an answer, attention on the phone.

Sending Hollow flying with a well-timed Getsuga Tenshou the subsititude shinigami rounded on Caroline.

"Explain!" demanded the strawberry blonde.

Caroline bobbed her head placatingly, eyes glued to her phone. At Ichigo'e second insistent shout, she waved a dismissive hand, the other tapping away on her iPhone. Zelphes was being an overprotective brother again, asking her questions faster than she can answer and freaking out because she was not answering.

Suddenly that waving hand pointed, and a red streak of light that looked and sounded suspiciously like a bala shot from her finger right through the Adjucas's chest.

"Careful," she warned Ichigo.

The impact of the blow blew it somewhere again, but Ichigo was now hundred percent sure Caroline was not human.

"What are you? Fullbringer?" He narrowed his eyes. That would explain the fact she was fighting in her flesh and no as a spirit.

At the term 'Fullbringer' the transfer student jerked.

"Don't compare me to those losers," her tone was a bit more guarded, more confident than her stuttering in class.

"Then what are you?" Ichigo's grip on his knife tightened. She could be a potential enemy. Best not to assume a friend and avoid being backstabbed later.

"Someone. Something. Pick either. Don't care."

Vague sentences.

Ichigo stared at her incredulously. Did she really just refer to herself as some'thing'?

"Are you going to finish that thing off? Or should I do it?" Caroline snapped her phone shut, annoyed at her brother's unending string of questions. It nearly interfered with the Hollow-sensor, sheesh.

Looking into the shinigami's eyes for the first time since they met that day, she saw disbelief and that only.

She sighed. Really. He was so open sometimes.

She plucked her zanpakuto from thin air, the moment her hand touching the shealth her clothes distorting and folding, changing shape and color, morphing from normal highschooler uniform into the black and red themed combat garb traditional to her kind.

As the Adjucas came at her, a flying mess of savage killer intent and sharp edges, she dodged and with an ease Ichigo had seen no shinigami posses, lobbed the sword arm off. Caught off guard the Adjucas paused to consider his next move, and his other arm was cut off.

"**Nabikasu, Seigyo Yoso**." And the flames came. Scorching, white hot flames sprang from the tip of Caroline's zanpakuto and though they were no match for the blistering heat of the Ryuujin Jaka, they did a good job of cauterizing the shoulder wounds.

Then something disturbing happened.

Caroline sheathed her sword and waved her hand, and the whole atmosphere changed.

A horrible choking sensation overwhelmed the substitute shinigami, and a despicable, terrible dread crashed landed on Ichigo, pulling him down. Hands scrabbling at the invisible _substance_ suffocating his throat, an undeniable emotion embedded its hook under his skin. All around the light tainted with red as a kind of swirling feeling started in his gut. It was something that slowly began to shout and scream and rave at the sheer _wrongness_ of the situation.

Something akin a a miniature black hole or a terribly formed Garganta began to form in front of an impassive Caroline, as wind began to whistle and whip at their frames and her light brown hair discolored to a dried burgundy in the fell light.

The black nothingness in front of her grew and shaped itself, slowly but surely, moulding its ridges into a long, rectangular silhouette double Ichigo's height, four times his width, possibly more, and it towered over them both, along with a shrieking Adjucas whose arm are already reforming.

Then Caroline furrowed her brows and crossed her arms and clicked her tongue, the perfect personification of irritance, staring through widly blowing bangs at the black mass.

"Hurry up and form!" she chided to the Garganta/black hole/something. "Zelphes will skin me alive and chop up the corpse if I miss another period on my first day!"

_Zelphes?_ Ichigo wondere faintly as the pressure on his neck receeded, letting him breath. But the feeling of wrongness did not dispel, if only it strenghtened and the dread turned his blood cold. The red glow around them solidified, collating in front of the rectangular shape, seeming to sink into it and –

He's only seen it once, but it was enough to brand itself into his mind.

The bloody red color swirling around the giant double doors with the two skeletons swinging the doors wide. The red aura lingered around them both, and the Adjucas seemed to realize what's happening to them, what's going to happen to it.

It screeched and tried to back away from the gradually emerging hand.

Until Caroline caught him by his mask and hauled him in front of the doors.

"Have fun being Hollow kebab," said Schnyder as she skewered the Adjucas on the tanto of the hand out of hell.

As it screamed and writhed, she sighed and waved her hand again, muttering, "It's much more fun when there's actually more than one Hollow."

The doors warped away in a similar fashion to the Garganta, and Ichigo dropped like a stone.

"Whoa whoa," Caroline caught him and lowered him onto the concrete sidewalk below.

Ichigo turned and retched into the gutter.

When he looked up again, Caroline's zanpakuto was gone, her clothing back to normal and once again tapping away on her weird device that could pass for a phone.

"Just what are you?" Ichigo asked again, a little weakly. He **had** almost vomited out his intestines anyway.

Caroline slipped the phone thingy into her pocket and looked at him sraight in the eyes then blankly stated, "You won't believe me."

"Hey, hey, hey. I've lived with seeing ghosts from the day I was born. I've been bullied into believing in the existence of shinigamis, of Hollows, of Arrancars, of even completely off guys like Aizen. I've accepted that I'm a human-shinigami cross. I've trained in the Dangai for 3 months, and almost died more times than I can count. I've dealt with the Fullbringers and their powers. I've gained and lost and gained my powers. What more can't I take?" Wow, that felt good. He should do these ramblings more.

Caroline didn't look the least bit ruffled.

"Even if you believe me you'll tell on me," she shrugged. "To your soutaichou, Yamamoto Genryuusai."

"That old geezer? Why would I?"

"Because my kind were banished aeons ago. Into the Void. Into the Rift. Into someplace infinitely worse then what they are subjecting Aizen to. We were banished into the gaping nothingness that is out of reach to even the Dangai."

Ichigo gaped.

"Into Hell."

She held his gaze for another few momens then took out a her phone and dialed a number. As she waited for it to connect, she pointed in the vague direction of the school.

"I left your body in a bush somewhere. You can go find it yourself."

And the line got through and she started muttering into the phone and walking away, though Ichigo still overheard, "Shouldn't have come back"

* * *

**Seigyo yōso - controlling elements: nabikasu - conquer (shikai)**

**A/N: Please drop a review and tell me how you think! I'm not even sure of the plot, just that I go this little plot bunny telling me to write this. If I get inspiration I will continue this, and it will span the current Thousand Year Blood War arc till the end.**

**Changed some spelling errors and my OC is all I own.**


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